Yes! It would be better if energy was priced correctly, in the United States and elsewhere. That requires informed markets.

The Economist could start by updating Mr Gore's hockey stick to show only undisputed statistically significant data. But what if that showed that there has been no correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and global atmospheric temperatures?

Such graphs have been published without dispute elsewhere on the Internet. This could explain why polling shows most taxpayers do not believe in AGW.

Anyone can put the most ridiculous graphs on the internet. A Mediamonitor worth his salt would check the source, though, and find that all those undisputed graphs that purport to show AGW isn't happening are from untrustworthy sources.

But I agree, this could explain why polling shows most taxpayers do not believe in AGW. Most taxpayers aren't necessarily good mediamonitors.

We agree that most taxpayers aren't necessarily good mediamonitors. We tend to follow preferred publishers and broadcasters - even after their dishonesty is exposed by other publishers. Recent examples were the dishonesty of various News Corp editors over phone hacking.

My question was/is: What if The Economist's updating of Gore's hockey stick to show only undisputed statistically significant data showed no correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and global atmospheric temperatures?

First, Gore has no hockey stick that I am aware of, though he may have referred to the one presented by Mann and colleagues.

Second, scientists have no doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that our emissions are causing global warming. The analysis you ask for has been done and it did show the correlation you would like to see disproved. Therefore, TE would never come with a graph like you describe.

Except to exclude disputed data, we should not be concerned with scientists doubts or analyses. For example some scientists dispute that "tree ring" data are suitable proxies for atmospheric temperatures. One web site that publishes the Man/Gore graph less tree ring data is here: http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025

While its data is five years old, it shows centuries of no statistically significant rise in global atmospheric temperature. It would take you or an investigator at The Economist no more time than it did me to come up with more of the same.

It matters not to markets if I or Sense Seeker admit our published errors, but if respected publishers like The Economist fail to correct their errors it damages both global energy market pricing and their editors' ability to retain paying subscribers.

TE is smarter than you are, Mediamonitor, in that it knows its limitations (it is not going to declare climate science is wrong about more CO2 causing a stronger greenhouse effect unless that is supported by science, which it isn't), and it knows a trustworthy source from an unreliable one.

TE accepts the view that is accepted by over 97% of climate scientists, the view that is supported by all major scientific organizations in the world. It rightly wastes no time with dodgy graphs from dodgy websites. And I don't know why anyone else would.

Oh, I see, it doesn't work on my browser. But it is the site of NCASI, which Google informs me it is an "Independent, non-profit research institute that focuses on environmental topics of interest to the forest products industry."

You'll excuse me if I don't take the trouble to use another browser to access a PR website.

China, the EU - their foreign energy dependence will be going up, markedly, especially in the former, which will still be lifting 800 million souls to urban living standards. Although, the former is also planting more green projects than the latter, and those aren't token trophies.

A quintessential preachy article from Economist. Not having done a thing to get to this oil/gas glut, it has provided a long list of things that America should do here on. Classical communist distribution mindset

Umm... what?
"Not having done a thing to get to this oil/gas glut"
The economist has advocated developing resources for as long as I can remember.
" it has provided a long list of things that America should do here on. "
Ya, TE likes to give policy advice. This has nothing to do with the first part of your sentence. First time reading this magazine?
"Classical communist distribution mindset"
Taxing externalities isn't communism, it's econ 101. I suggest you enroll in a class.

Reading the comments below makes me wonder where the global perspective went in Economist readers. Do you really think that the most important thing about this is whether you pay 10 cents extra per gallon in tax?

How about the impact on the politics of the middle east - e.g. who gives a sh1t what Ahmedinejad says if the oil price collapses? What happens to the Saudi monarchy when it runs out of bribes to pay? Who bombs who first - Israel or Iran? What happens to output costs if suddenly Chinese coal is no longer cheaper than Canadian oil?

But if we must be parochial, here's a UK perspective;

When do we get to stick it to the oil and gas cartel that is currently ripping off the British consumer because we were stupid enough to believe that "privatising" it meant that it was OK to sell it to the French and German state-owned power monopolies who collude to exploit the naivety of our elected idiots?

The Democrats will find a way to screw this up just like they have before. This is when they passed excess profit taxes and price controls in the 60's which drove oil production to other countries. When they prohibited even exploration off the entire Atlantic coast so we still don't know how much oil is there waiting to be developed. When Clinton vetoed the bill passed by the Republican Congress in the 90's to drill oil in Alaska's ANWA. You just wait and see Obama and the wicked witch of the west Lisa Jackson will bring fracking to a halt. She has yet to pass any regulations. It is being done on private land so she will have the power to do so where the Interior Dept does not. Elections have consequences.

More global warming blah blah. There are benefits and costs of it, and you should acknowledge the legitimate controversy over causation, as well as effect. There is some speculation that, if AGW is happening, it's being offset by a natural cooling trend that might end the present interglacial, ie., it's forestalling the next ice age.

First, that next ice age is already well and truly forestalled. Current CO2 levels are more than high enough to rule out the possibility. Had there been no industrial revolution, yes, perhaps one could have been waiting around the corner, some time in the next few thousand years. But that's now off the table.

There is little in the way of legitimate controversy over causation. There is zero room for doubt that it is human activities driving the regular and relentless increase in atmospheric CO2 levels. There is no competing hypothesis as to the cause of the warming we've seen, other than a vague `something else'. While temperatures are not moving smoothly up in lockstep with CO2, statisticians know how to extract the signal from the noise, and there's a lot of signal. (For instance, this year's shattering of the previous record summer low for arctic sea ice.)

There is indeed legitimate controversy, or at any rate uncertainty, as to the effect. But that uncertainty is between bad and worse, or even absolutely devastating. Benefits will be local and short-lived. Costs will include higher sea levels, which will first threaten London, New York, Mumbai, Tokyo, Shanghai, Singapore, Rotterdam, and so forth, and then make them untenable. Large swaths of prime rice cropland in Bangladesh, Taiwan, Vietnam, and China will be poisoned by salt intrusion. This is just the beginning. There are many costs that are reasonably likely but cannot be called certain. Taken as a whole, these risks aggregate into a near certainty of some sort of further major cost.

The point of taxes that reflect the long term costs of CO2 emissions is not so much to defray those costs. That's probably impossible. It is to buy time, by reducing current consumption, for the introduction of better green technology. If we had to go with what we now have, building a sufficiently green infrastructure would cost maybe 5 percent of world GDP for decades. (This figure is cautious...it could well be less. Scientific American rolled out a plan of sorts for how to do it, a few years back.) If we can double our overall green efficiency, that drops to 2.5 percent. And so on.

In the meantime, transitioning from coal to natural gas doubles the time we have to "get to green".

1. THE TEMPERATURE RECORD DOES NOT SUPPORT THE WARMING THESIS.
Stewart Francke, (Prof., Environmental Engineering, U. Newcastle), THE AUSTRALIAN, Apr. 18, 2012.
The theory of dangerous temperature rises simply isn't backed up by the research. Two recent, widely publicised reports by the government's scientific advisory agencies on climate change have sought to raise alarm yet again about global warming. With the world having warmed slightly during the late 20th century,
CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and the Climate Commission all advocate that this warming was caused mainly by industrial emissions of carbon dioxide, and that the continuation of emissions unchecked will cause dangerous warming of 3C-4C by 2100. However, these and other climate agencies are now encountering a public that is increasingly aware of the lack of factual evidence for dangerous warming, and of the speculative nature of the arguments advanced in its favour. For example, many people now understand that there is no direct evidence that 20th-century warming was caused mostly by carbon dioxide increase; that the late 20th-century warming has been followed by a 15-year temperature standstill in the face of continuing increases in carbon dioxide; and that the models that project alarming future warming are inadequate.
CLIMATE SCIENTISTS ARE UNABLE TO EXPLAIN WHY RISING CARBON DIOXIDE LEVELS ARE NOT CAUSING WARMING.
Stephen Chen, (Staff), SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, Mar. 10, 2012
The United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that if we could limit the total amount of greenhouse gases equivalent to 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide, we could hold global temperature rises to within 2 degrees Celsius in a century. But the global carbon dioxide level has already reached 390 ppm. Add in other gases such as methane, and we are very close to, or even breaching, the 450 ppm limit. Here lies a problem: world temperatures since the industrial revolution, which was an especially cold period at the end of the Little Ice Age, have risen by 0.74 degrees Celsius - way lower than the prediction of the IPCC's mathematical models. How do scientists account for the lower-than-expected temperature change despite accelerated emissions? "Facing such reality, many scientists summon unreliable reasons such as the 'cooling effect of aerosols'," Ding said. "That makes us suspect that they are choosing a side, the side serving political correctness and other purposes that I don't want to specify here."
also follow the following link to page 18 for more credible evidence against significant human global warming.
If you are wondering why I have this it is because I am a well researched high schooler in the National Forensic League.http://www.blissfieldschools.us/downloads/justin_pooley/casebook_1_2012_...

I'm getting rather tired of reading articles quoting carbon emissions without stating sources. What constitutes "normal" crude. In fact some Canadian Heavy Oil producers have lower GHG production emissions than the AVERAGE US crude diet according to an IHS CERA study, and much lower than California heavy production.

Excess liquidity is what has been pushing up global petroleum demand for a decade plus. The OECD projects 1.2% average global petroleum production capacity increases through 2035. This is a sliver of the growth rate it will take to get on top of the related sovereign debt balloon. Despite America's energy turnaround, globally, we're constrained by energy availability.

Far more compelling changes are needed to America's fiscal policy than a carbon tax.

Every time I read an article in the Economist that advocates for higher energy taxes, I sense envy (dare I say, jealousy) over the relatively lower energy-related taxes we pay in the States.

Just because Euro and UK petrol taxes are high doesn't mean they should in the United States. I pay about 50 cents in taxes for each gallon of gas I buy at the pump. That's about 15% of the price per gallon and is quite enough, thank you.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but gasoline taxes seem particularly regressive. So are you advocating that we stick it to the poor in the name of "global warming"?

Perhaps a better approach to your article would be to argue how current energy-related tax dollars are allocated?

Most economists agree that a carbon tax has to be accompanied by an across-the-board rebate or negative income tax in order for it to not be regressive.

According to the NHTSA, in 2007, $193 billion was spent on highway maintenance. Nominally gasoline taxes and some minor tolls are supposed to pay for this expenditure with congress making up the gap with discretionary funds. Instead, in that year only 51% of the highway maintenance bill was paid by user fees. Thus the effective subsidy to car and truck drivers in 2007 was over $94 billion dollars from the general revenue pool, the equivalent of roughly $300 from every man, woman, and child in America.

You may think it's quite enough, but even absent fears of AGW the gasoline tax ought to be a lot higher just to pay for unfunded highway maintenance. In fact, I believe N. Gregory Mankiw (a conservative-leaning economist) calculated that the cost of an efficient, reasonable carbon tax on gasoline would be a paltry $.04 per gallon, which would be dwarfed by efficient highway maintenance excises and congestion excises.

You're right that gasoline taxes are regressive. Taxes on carbon content would also be mildly regressive. But that's an objection that is easily enough met. Let the entire amount of the tax collected be given out equally to all citizens of the nation. The incentives to conserve remain in force, but the redistributive effects flow from rich to poor rather than the other way around.

If that's too progressive, there are intermediate steps along the same line. Let half of it be given out, or something.

It must be kept in mind that the poor live mostly in hot parts of the globe. Perhaps that is because being hot makes you poor. If so, we should be wary of making more of the globe hot. But in any event, further warming will be all for the worst for those living in places already too hot. Rational solicitude for the poor looks at the big picture.

The taxes I pay are both federal and state. The federal excise tax is 18.4 cents per gallon, which is the basis of your NHTSA stat. I pay a total of 50 cents per gallon. So, although your argument is enlightening, it still doesn't capture the entire picture of how those tax dollars are allocated.

As an American, it is comforting and encouraging to know that our industries continue to innovate in an effort to ensure that the economy moves forward. Energy is the bedrock of economic development, always has been, always will be, at every stage of the development of civilization. Energy with a capital E, that is, not just oil, gas, etc.. Using it propels economies and societies forward (on the assumption you believe economic security and human serving advances is "forward" progress). It is also proven that the more access you have to energy, the more efficient you become in finding and using it, and ultimately, the more you use. I disagree with your Carbon tax comment. It will not slow down demand, it never will, in a meaningful long term sense. The Carbon tax has proven to be delivering very little return. America taxes its citizens and companies more than enough. By many measures we are excessive. Our industries have tapped and developed this source, not our government. There is plenty of tax revenue. Direct it to early stage research, not foolish uncompetitive industry subsidizing, which rarely if ever works. The US government has proven many times in the last 4 years, it has no business betting on technological viability. It has plenty of business supporting early stage discovery, and has proven over and over it is quite good at this. Use the tax revenue we already collect intelligently, not naively and hopefully.

Take wind turbines or solar panels. Technological development works best when the designers communicate with end-users. So future technologies will develop in areas where there is a market for the products. That is why Denmark is big in wind turbines.

Continued reliance on cheap but finite fossil fuels is a stupid strategy in the long term. It's a technological dead-end.

Denmark is big in wind turbines because of the relatively large portion of bulky low-tech components in relation to total unit costs. By your logic, a nation should pursue low-tech, highly regional production because in some way it improves their comparitive advantage. When demand shifts to the USA or some other country, will denmark export their rotar blades? No. The suppliers will build new plants near the end user. It makes no sense to subsidize low-end technology manufacture and development (As seems to be mostly the case with current alternative energy investments).

On a side note, the continental US has probably the greatest potential for wind power generation of any country, say some studies. The price of Brent or likely more dominant NYMEX quote on a barrel of oil is likely to continue upwards as development in China and India add many hundreds of millions more souls to world consumer economy, so green energy is likely to get more viable, just as tar sands have become in Canada, and fracking of shale gas kicks off in the US.

There isn't a climate crisis. There's never been a climate crisis, nor will there ever be a climate crisis. Evidence of the opposite arrives almost monthly, along with increasing evidence of fraud which only serves to cause climate cry babies to dig in their heels. How sad.

Those of us who are not allergic to reality have accepted the findings of 99% of all climate and related disciplines' scientists. The rest will be convinced when the ocean is laving their doorsteps, at which point they will be screaming that the government should have done something.

It actually doesn’t matter whether humans affect climate change or not because the primary issue of pollution is one of responsible stewardship.

Just because pilling up junk in your backyard isn’t environmentally hazardous doesn’t mean that it isn’t a mess. Your mom didn’t tell you to pick up your socks and your underwear and to put them in a drawer because it was hazardous. She told you so your room wasn’t a mess, and so that you could develop some self-discipline and self-respect. Same thing here.

We’re the ones on the globe that are aware enough to recognize when we’re making a mess, and that makes it our responsibility to clean it up when we do. If we don’t then we haven’t learned the basic self-responsibility that our moms tried to instill in us when we were ten. It is high time that we did.

1. THE TEMPERATURE RECORD DOES NOT SUPPORT THE WARMING THESIS.
Stewart Francke, (Prof., Environmental Engineering, U. Newcastle), THE AUSTRALIAN, Apr. 18, 2012,
12.
The theory of dangerous temperature rises simply isn't backed up by the research. Two recent, widely publicised reports by the government's scientific advisory agencies on climate change have sought to raise alarm yet again about global warming. With the world having warmed slightly during the late 20th century,
CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and the Climate Commission all advocate that this warming was caused mainly by industrial emissions of carbon dioxide, and that the continuation of emissions unchecked will cause dangerous warming of 3C-4C by 2100. However, these and other climate agencies are now
encountering a public that is increasingly aware of the lack of factual evidence for dangerous warming, and of the speculative nature of the arguments advanced in its favour. For example, many people now understand that there is no direct evidence that 20th-century warming was caused mostly by carbon dioxide
increase; that the late 20th-century warming has been followed by a 15-year temperature standstill in the face of continuing increases in carbon dioxide; and that the models that project alarming future warming are inadequate.

The United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that if we could limit the total amount of greenhouse gases equivalent to 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide, we could hold global temperature rises to within 2 degrees Celsius in a century. But the global
carbon dioxide level has already reached 390 ppm. Add in other gases such as methane, and we are very close to, or even breaching, the 450 ppm limit. Here lies a problem: world temperatures since the industrial revolution, which was an especially cold period at the end of the Little Ice Age, have risen by 0.74 degreesCelsius - way lower than the prediction of the IPCC's mathematical models. How do scientists account for
the lower-than-expected temperature change despite accelerated emissions? "Facing such reality, many scientists summon unreliable reasons such as the 'cooling effect of aerosols'," Ding said. "That makes us suspect that they are choosing a side, the side serving political correctness and other purposes that I don't want to specify here."

EVEN THE MOST EXTREME GLOBAL WARMING THEORISTS ARE NOW ADMITTING
THEY WERE WRONG.
Lawrence Solomon, (Staff), FINANCIAL POST, Apr. 28, 2012, FP21.
Several years ago, environmentalist James Lovelock made headlines when he announced that global warming would end the world as we know it - he predicted that "billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable." Google searches associating his name with global warming and climate change now exceed one million hits, and understandably so, given his reputation. Lovelock has infused environmental thought for decades through best-selling books describing Earth as a living organism - Lovelock is the one who coined the Gaia concept. Among many other honours heaped on Lovelock, Time magazine featured him in a series on Heroes of the
Environment. So, why, when Lovelock this week recanted his past views on global warming as being "alarmist," did virtually every major news outlet on the planet ignore his change of heart? It wasn't because he minced his words. "The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20
years ago," he admitted, adding that temperatures haven't increased as expected over the last 12 years."There's nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now."

Also follow the following link to page 18 for more credible evidence against significant human global warming.
If you are wondering why I have this it is because I am a well researched high schooler in the National Forensic League.

Is it mainly republicans who don't agree with the science of climate change? just asking. Same with evolution. And is it because republicans are more likely to hold beliefs that align with their own individual self interest rather than objective facts. We need to get some neuroscientists to examine the brains of said republicans to see if their self-interest nodules fire up when evaluating scientific conclusions.

Carbon taxes are politically toxic. I've long been an advocate of carbon taxes but we have to accept the current reality that they will not be passed during the remainder of the current Congress' term nor in the next - and not in any Congress in which the currently climate skeptic GOP holds the House, Senate or Presidency. So what, I wonder, is The Economist's stance on what might feasibly happen? Of this two-part strategy, should the first part be implemented in the absence of the other, or are they integrally linked?

As The Economist has repeatedly pointed out, businesses fear uncertainty much more than they fear a predictable carbon tax. Taxes can be absorbed or passed on; uncertainty paralyzes businesses because they cannot predict governmental swings in mood and policy. Doing nothing is better than doing something which may at some point down the road have to be undone to meet new regulations.

Like you, I support well-defined carbon taxes. But so long as Republicans choose to live in a Fantasyland of their own creation on the topic of global warming/climate change, America will remain a reluctant, petulant, desultory participant in remediation measures rather than a global leader.

Obama has proved that it is politically feasible to impose rules on coal that have the effect of banning construction of further coal fired utilities. One need only set unattainable standards for mercury emissions, for example. It would probably be possible to raise the alarm about ground water pollution or some such red herring and similarly arrive at a ban on fracking. Customer dismay over soaring utilities could be deflected into anger at the utilities for raising rates. (Never mind that the new, higher rates reflect new, higher costs for wind and solar and nuclear.) A lot is politically feasible that is neither rational nor honest.

Rational, honest Republicans, should some be found, might agree to a carbon tax as an alternative to this other scenario.

The GOP (and large portions of the unaffiliated population) have legitimate gripes with a proposed carbon tax. Given the critical need that hydrocarbon derived energy has supplied for 1st world living standards and economic development over the past 250 years, the potential for taxation is enormous (highly inelastic demand structure). As such, they are concerned that allocating a much increased percentage of GDP to govt where productivity is less (and the impacts of rent seeking or other behavior actually creates negative relations during disbursment). Proposing a revenue neutral carbon tax (which many republicans and economic liberals would be proponents of) would result in a substantial reduction to the progressive nature of federal taxation. As such, this policy is shot down immediately for being "unfair" by the very non-GOP aspects of society (I find it ironic that taxing people based upon their destructive contribuiton is considered "unfair" and morally wrong).